Healing
by Kellifer
Summary: When Daniel Jackson is fatally wounded offworld, Sam has no choice but to use the Healing device to try and save him.


Disclaimer - I do not own the characters and events portrayed in Stargate SG1, but I do borrow them for stories.

-Healing-

Plink.

Plink.

Plink.

'Dammit Jack!" Daniel cried. He knew Jack was merely annoying him to watch him get riled up and he tried to resist catering to Jack's sadistic streak, but there was only so long a person could stand getting small rocks thrown at the back of their skull. Daniel turned to glare at the Colonel but Jack had his head turned in another direction. "Do you hear that Daniel?"

"Hear what?" Daniel said, his gaze following the path of Jack's.

Pock.

"Ow!" Jack had thrown a larger pebble, without even looking in Daniel's direction and caught him right between the eyes, just above the bridge of his glasses. Daniel took them off to rub his temple. "How do you do that?" He complained. Jack turned to face him, grinning. "Black ops training my friend. I can annoy you from fifty paces. Now, is that translation done or do I have to find a bigger rock?"

"Alright! I'll take some pictures and then we can go." Daniel grumped, gathering his books and pencils together. He shoved them in his pack and pulled free the digital camera he had started to carry, knowing that Jack's patience had a finite limit and if he wanted to study things at length he would have to take a record for back on earth.

"Do you hear that?" Jack said, his whole demeanour changing. Daniel sighed, his back to the Colonel. "I'm not falling for that again." He said, standing and turning to Jack. He saw Jack had crouched down with his rifle drawn. "Danny, get down!" Jack exclaimed.

Daniel felt like someone punched him in the chest and he staggered backwards. There was a hot pain that was spreading outwards and he looked down. He could see a black-fletched arrow protruding from his shirtfront. "Huh." He said, almost nonchalantly and then collapsed.

"Poison? Nasty." Jack sighed. He was standing by Daniel's bedside, looking down into the drawn and pale face of the archaeologist. Sam stood beside him and Hammod was at the end of the bed. The arrow had been removed from Daniel's chest and there had been relief that it had missed his heart, but the relief had been short-lived. An unheard of but pervasive poison was working through Daniel's system and he had deteriorated in only the few hours since they had been back at the SGC, more than the doctors would have thought possible. Jack had offered to go back to the planet and see if there was a cure, or bring back a native and wring the cure out of them, but the doctors had only shaken their heads gravely. "Given the current rate of decline, he would be dead long before you got back Colonel." They had said.

Apparently, Daniel had only about 5 hours, give or take.

"I'd like to try the hand device." Sam said quietly. Jack looked at her quickly. "You said you're not sure what you're doing with that thing."

"I'm not, but I can't stand here and do nothing. I can either give this a try and heal him, or I'll make it a lot quicker." Sam shrugged helplessly, tears in her eyes. She looked to Hammond who nodded. "Do it." He said simply.

Sam retrieved the Gou'ld healing device from the safe in her lab and brought it back to the infirmary. She let out a little cry of distress when she saw Daniel. There were now deep smudges under his eyes like bruises and he seemed to be fading away in front of her. "You can do this Carter." Jack said, squeezing her shoulder. She nodded, placed the healing device on her hand and held it over Daniel's still form.

"Hi Sam. I wasn't expecting you." Sam jumped when she heard Daniel's voice behind her. She turned and realised they were in his office in the SGC. There was something wrong however. The light was muted and the sound muffled. She couldn't hear the normal buzzy hubbub that was a constant in the place. Daniel was smiling at her, a worn book in his hand.

"Where am I?" She asked, puzzled.

"Don't really know. I think it's my head. All my stuff is here." Daniel answered with a shrug, gesturing about himself. His voice was deeper and his eyes bluer than she'd ever seen them. She watched him, as he started moving about the office again. He had boxes all over the place and was carefully putting items into them. "What are you doing?" Sam asked, picking up the book nearest to her. It was the battered notebook he always had with him. It was an item she identified so closely with Daniel that when he had ascended, it was the first thing she had sought out to bring some measure of comfort. It had smelled of Daniel and his thoughts were captured on its pages.

"Clearing out. There's a lot of clutter in here." He said, gesturing around the room, and then almost as an afterthought tapping his temple with a finger. "Or here I guess." He said with a smile.

"Looks like you're packing up… going somewhere?" Sam said, fingers trailing over a statue that was on Daniel's desk, his journal still hugged to her chest. "I must be. I have this feeling like I need to go somewhere… else." Daniel replied. Daniel stopped in the middle of the room and surveyed it. Sam realised the room was almost empty. She had never seen Daniel's office free of clutter.

She didn't like it.

"Sam?" He prompted, hand outstretched to her. For a second she didn't know what he meant, but he was pointing at the journal she held. She gripped it closer to herself. "Sam, you have to give that to me. You have to let it go." He said, taking a step toward her.

"No I don't. I'm keeping this part of you. If I don't let it go you have to stay." Sam shook her head, backing away. Daniel sighed, the sound he used whenever he was particularly exasperated with something Jack was doing. He reached out both hands. "Give." He said.

"Nope." Sam said. She felt a warm sensation in her chest where the book was pressed. She smiled. "I think I know what I have to do now. I have to take your hurt away." She said. She opened the book and instead of the hundreds of notations of different dialects that she was used to seeing in it, there were four words, written over and over and over again on every page.

_I let her go._

Sam raised the book above her head. "Sam, what are you - ?" Daniel started and then cried out when Sam wrenched her hands apart, tearing the book in two. "I won't let you or Jack do this to yourselves anymore." She said, her voice stern. "There's too much pain. You have to let it go and know it's not your fault." As she talked she reduced the book into fragments, tearing pages out and flinging them around the room. Then she went to the boxes Daniel had been packing and started shoving things back on the shelves. "Seems I'm going to have to put you back together." She said, moving around the room like a woman possessed.

"I like your - "

"- clutter." Sam opened her eyes and both General Hammond and Jack were looking at her curiously. She smiled though because there was another set of eyes on her. "Daniel." She sighed, smiling.

"Hey Sam." He croaked, colour flooding back into his features. "I had the weirdest dream…"


End file.
